


Glass Animals

by Satan In Purple (purple_satan)



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: #team make credence hurt, Bedsharing, M/M, Smangst, Sorry Not Sorry, look at this garbage fire wtf, lowkey fluff, obscurial sex, pet!Credence, sort of dark!Newt, that bleached pinapple head in disguise laid hands on our son oh no you best believe, yup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 00:50:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9296981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple_satan/pseuds/Satan%20In%20Purple
Summary: Obscurials,he remembers reading in Mr. Scamander’s notes.Parasitic. Untrainable, unpredictable. Exceptionally dangerous to keep even with precautions.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brittlelimbs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brittlelimbs/gifts).



> [Put your hand down, boy](https://youtu.be/z4ifSSg1HAo)  
> [Welcome to my zoo](https://youtu.be/z4ifSSg1HAo) 
> 
> Inspo. by Glass Animals "Toes" the most fucked up Crewt song I have ever heard.

 

* * *

  
He wakes Mr. Scamander in the middle of the night, bed dipping as Credence feels fever hot skin shivering against his own. Burrowing under the duvet, he molds himself to the man’s side and Newt reflexively goes stiff, rigid like a board at the unexpected contact. He tentatively brushes what he hopes are reassuring fingers and toes against his scarred arms and legs. Newt’s heart skitters in his chest, jackalope-fast as he moves, breath hitching.

 _Obscurials,_ he remembers reading in Mr. Scamander’s notes. _Parasitic. Untrainable, unpredictable. Exceptionally dangerous to keep even with precautions._

Credence thinks of the lone obscurus inside Mr. Scamander's suitcase. Forever trapped in its protective magic bubble, the swirling velvety black void. Immediately feeling the sway of it calling him like a siren song. Credence reaching out pale fingers to it like a kindred, tentatively brushing fingertips against the magical barrier as he felt the sweet, seduction of power on the other side. The snap of energy, the thrashing rage. The desperate, mute howling for a release never to be found in this lifetime or the next, of a creature not unlike him.

He remembers when he felt the same.

A tear rolls down his cheek and he turns his head to stifle a sob into the pillowcase, twisting fingers grasping at the other man. He hears the rasp of Newt’s breathing, the shift of limnal sleepiness to the restless nervous energy humming like a livewire Mr. Scamander's normally brimming with.

Credence clutches at him, waiting. Waiting for the reprimand that doesn’t come.

Newt blinks twice, impossibly blue eyes pale in the moonlight filtering into the room, before turning to crane his neck and meet Credence’s watery gaze beside him.

“Credence—” he begins, voice raspy as he exhales. “What’s this about?”

 _I am not myself, Mr. Scamander,_ Credence thinks. _I still feel darkness inside me. Wickedness, the likes of which not even you could control._

Shadows dance on the walls. Silence passes between them, stretched long and bittersweet. Newt’s hand steadies as he reaches out to run long fingers through dark hair soothingly, more matronly than illicit. Credence has seen Newt do the same to dozens of animals in his care. From skittery mooncalves to orphaned angha kits, feather-light touches coaxing them gently into the open one stroke at a time until they're calm enough to properly handle.

It's queer, a strange fact to know— but not unwanted, to be touched the same in turn.

“Oh, Credence,” he whispers as blunted fingernails scratch lightly against his scalp. He relaxes against Credence. “Don’t cry. It won’t be like this forever.”

With his head on Newt’s chest and the man’s clever hand in his hair, he intentionally chooses to disregard how ominous the statement sounds.

Closing his eyes, Credence puts it in a little glass box like he did the other things he felt when he was younger, ignoring it to feel the darkness of sleep finally take him.  


 

* * *

  
That night Credence dreams, heart clenching tightly in his chest. Dark, howling winds and rough fingers against his scarred flesh, digging into the meat of his thighs. Glassine recollections of things that once were, now broken. Breath-blown and hand-shaped memories like treasured tendrils, keepsakes from another time now shattered shards whenever he runs his fingers over them. Every _Good Boy_ , every touch bestowed on him cuts to his already scarred skin.

The dangerous games they played, illicit trysts in alleyways under the shimmery cover of spells to hide them from the eyes of curious no-maj that left Credence spent, darkness inside him momentarily satiated. Sticky spend between his thighs and on his drawers he’d have to wash later, after Ma went to sleep to not be punished. An education of sorts in what clever fingers and an even more clever tongue could do with the right initiative.

Probably not the kind Ma had chastised him for not having, but Mr. Graves— _oh, he had initiative._

The way he whispered into the shell of Credence’s ear what he believed to be good and righteous, hips snapping as he fucked him harder into the lumpy mattress. Nothing like what he had heard from Ma or the gospel, but his own version of the truth. Sly smiles, a litany of comforting words. How special Credence was, how important he would be. His quest for a perfect world they could be together in, as he held him down. Hands around his wrists hard enough to bruise. Bodies slotted together on the small bed in his quarters. How foolish Credence was for thinking he could hurt him, as he expertly coaxed out the restless energy and rage inside of him for both of them to see.

 _I am not who I want to be_ , _Mr. Graves,_ he cried as he closed his eyes and let go. Tore through fabric, flesh beginning to rend underneath the onslaught of power. All the little cuts licking and welling with rivulets of blood that left them both gasping. _I feel darkness. Wickedness._

Graves held him closer to his chest, bucking underneath him. Whispering praises and petting his hair. Moving together as one while the dark wind howled around them, staking its claim.

 _You’re a good boy,_ he rasped, hand clasping and heavy like a weight to bear on the back of Credence’s neck. The tatters of fine wool and silk scraping against his cheek as he bowed his head in supplication. _Such a good boy. My good boy._

 _Hishishis,_ Credence thought. As though maybe the concept would make him feel righteous, would make him feel whole.

The feeling of ownership in a world that didn’t want him, that made him a ward to the state. The system that passed him around, door-to-door like one of the Second Salemers flyers. Then Ma sunk her teeth into his pale flesh and taught him the Word, showed him what repentance was. How he was beget from sin. Ma never knew the true extent of his power until her untimely end, but still pegged him as wicked boy from the moment she laid eyes on him. Full of darkness to be purged with the Holy Word, with penitence. Regiments of belts, of bruised knees. Lashes on the arms and back to remind him he was unfit, unclean. Only faith in the Lord God their savior could bring him to the light.

Knowing nothing else he believed her. Because he knew from the moment he was aware he had a darkness in him, that part at least was true.

It's just— the problem with what Ma and the good word told him was that Graves didn’t make him feel sinful.

Far from it, in fact.

And once Credence finally felt power for once in his life at the hands of Percival Graves, he clung tightly to it like a lifeline that would save him from his miserable existence. Once he _really_ tasted it, he wasn’t about to let it be stripped from him again.

Until he realized Graves was playing him for a fool. Plaster and bricks crumbling, asphalt crunching as buildings fell like matchsticks around him. Mr. Graves voice echoing in his ears and the alien word— _squib, squib, squib_ — haunting him as rage welled inside him at the rejection, the betrayal.

Then all hell broke loose.

  


 

* * *

  
Conventional wisdom held and perpetuated by both the British and American Wizarding communities is that Credence is the first obscurial in over 200 years. Mr. Scamander tells him this with a soft snort as they lay in bed and the sun rises, casting his wavy hair in shades of copper like shiny pennies tossed midday in a fountain.  

That little bit they both, of course, know to be false.

“You know, Credence, I’m somewhat of a... _collector_ of sorts,” Newt says, drawing out the word as he stares at the slats of the ceiling. “You’re hardly the first obscurial I’ve crossed. Been trying to come up with a, _mmmm_ —” he stops for a moment, lost in thought, tapping a long finger against his lips. “ _Solution_ to your problem.”

He tilts his head to look down at Credence, blue eyes sparkling, crinkling at the corners. This close Credence can see every fleck in his irises, every perfect imperfection. Can count each of the numerous freckles that smatter the bridge of his nose and cheeks.

“If you’d let me,” he adds hastily, gaze darting back up and then down again like a wild animal. An insect pinned under glass.

Credence nods his head, face scraping against the soft white cotton of Newt’s undershirt. Whatever it takes to purge the darkness from him.

“It’ll be dangerous.”

He thinks of the obscurus in the suitcase, the howling forever trapped. The held superstition obscurials don’t make it past a tenth birthday. How he defies convention sheerly by existing. How brittle and uncharted his meager life is, a glass animal just on the verge of being ready to shatter. His next outburst may be his last. His fate may already be sealed. Proof of his wickedness might be forever trapped in a magic bubble by this man, his keeper, like a butterfly helplessly fluttering in a bell jar until it suffocates.

He wishes the obscurus could tell him how. Could tell him why. Could tell him _when_. If the seconds of his life are being metered, tallied somewhere he doesn't know the score of.

So this accord, this agreement with Mr. Scamander, is perhaps the most bold decision Credence has made in his short life.

 _Whatever it takes._  


* * *

  
Mary Lou Barebone thought Credence was a dirty, sinful boy. She wasn’t wrong, just thought it for the wrong reasons. Percival Graves thought Credence to be soft, malleable enough to be a weapon wielded in a war he didn’t know the stakes of. He was wrong too, but at least he had more foresight and a better vision than Ma and the Second Salemers.

In the beginning Credence held the belief Newt Scamander thought him a tragedy. A boy to be saved from the clutches of a fantastic beast he would swoop in and collect, a maiden in a tower. But the sad look in his eyes he gives him slowly turns to a more wondrous twinkle as Credence learns to control his power under Newt’s patient tutelage. And eventually, after many many years and adventures later, Credence realizes there is no _cure_. No chance at the normal life Mr. Scamander once promised him.

What they have been living, the taking care of and tracking down of new exotic creatures— how Mr. Scamander is passing on his knowledge days at a time to Credence’s eager ears— is his only chance at life. It’s not as stiflingly small as the bubble the obscurus has, but Newt has Credence, his pet obscurial trapped nonetheless.

Not that he’s ever tried to escape. After all, _why would he?_ He has everything he needs. Newt doesn’t leave his side, nor does he leave the other man’s bed.

And while he pets Credence’s head and stares at the moonlight, carding his fingers through the boy’s longer hair, Credence takes comfort in the fact he’s finally found his place in the world. Not a sinful boy or a weapon, just another beast added to a man’s prized menagerie.

But it’s okay.

After all, Newt takes _very good_ care of his pets.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my girl [brittlelimbs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brittlelimbs/works) and [robokittens](https://archiveofourown.org/users/robokittens/pseuds/robokittens), who were my biggest cheerleaders jumping into this brand new fandom. Also [imochan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imochan/pseuds/imochan), [reserve](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reserve/pseuds/reserve) and [betty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betts/pseuds/betts) for inspo. [Foxtricks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wireddifferently/pseuds/foxtricks) and my writing love [Alania](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alania/pseuds/Alania) were absolutely wonderful helping this actually get posted.
> 
> This turned out a lot LESS DARK than I thought it would and I don’t know why. Don’t expect me to pull my punches next time.
> 
> I still haven't fallen out of Kylux hell, but I sure do love Gradence and Crewt too! For weird ass writing shit and fandom wank: follow me on tumblr @ [purple-satan-fic](http://purple-satan-fic.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
